Why Chief Engineers & Directors not get posts sanctioned for jobs that involve regular public assets & services

Appointment of casual employees has been banned after 1994 so why
regulars are not provided to Field Units?

Daya Sagar

Why not cut short the process by making CEs competent for sanction of cases of old casual/ DRWs?No government that comes to power has been able to address promptly even the genuine cases of the daily wage employees working for years together doing the job for a vacancy which surely needed a regular employee to be posted there. So, the politicians trumpeting their slogans of promising to first regularise 50,000 to 60,000 daily rate workers if voted to power should be rather questioned by the media that why they have remembered the issue when out of power instead of simply reporting their statement in media .
A.R Rather, the then Finance Minister J&K Government had made a very important disclosure in 2014 (29th August ) when he said that there were 70000 “Casual Labourers and NBW (Need Based Workers)” and government was not aware from where their wages were drawn / paid and that required to investigated for (i) what was the basis for including them in the category of Casual labourers and NBW (ii) under what rule the categories of Casual labourers and NBWs form part of government records (iii) in case these Casual labourers and NBW are required continuously for years in a government department why their wages are not budgeted and in case their need is not regular then how has government asked for compilation of data on them (iv) why the concerned departments have not been projecting the job requirements that were otherwise regular and continuing some people as NBW for even beyond 5/7/10 years without any appointed financial sanction for paying wages to them for years (v) and like. And what G M Saroori had said on 29th August 2014 on floor of Legislative Assembly about some not getting wages for “months” had raised very serious question on the Divisional heads/ Heads of Department ( CE PHE in particular ) in the referred case who were supposed to identify the job requirements on regular basis , project the vacancies , get the posts sanctioned or sanction the posts and fill the vacancies on regular basis. Why should only those appointed to jobs should only become victim, why not those also be questioned who are there to plan, execute and administer government schemes/ projects/ programmes/public service delivery institutions?
Concern is often shown by the political leaders about the plight of those engaged in the government departments as Daily Rate Workers and striving for years to get regularised but it happens mostly when announcements for holding some elections are made. Some senior leaders even in states like J&K have been quoting the numbers of such employees in government departments as 50000 to 60000 year after year atleast since 2012 expressing very very express concerns quoting that many of them have been working on meagre wages without any job security for even 10 to 15 years. Not only the political leaders even the senior leaders of associations/ unions of regular employees too talk of the Daily Wage/Casual workers engaged in PHE/ PDD/ I&FC/ Agri/ etc whenever they raise their own demands , they do more so when they need to go for demonstrations / rallies because a suffering daily wager can provide vocal strengths but later they in a way forget them where as ‘seniors’ as regular employees can do a lot good for preparing genuine cases of DWs/ casual workers . To quote it was also somewhere around 17 November 2020 that a senior leader of EJAC is referred to have said in a meeting at Town Hall Kupwara that EJAC is always with voice less employees like daily wagers.

Why not cut short the process by making CEs competent for sanction of cases of old casual/ DRWs?

Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather had on 29th August informed the legislature during zero hour in reply to a question by Hakeem Mohammad Yaseen as regards casual labourers /NBW working in Public Health Engineering (PHE)/ Power Development Department (PDD) /other departments that there was a clear policy on Daily Rated Workers (DRW) for their regularisations after completing seven years of continuous service adding that out of 59,000 DRWs56,000 have been regularised and remaining 3000 were being regularised but at the same time also said that there was no policy for Casual Labourers and NBW( need based workers) of whom the number could be 70000 and government had asked the departments to let the administrative departments know that who appointed them, what was the source of their wages. Ofcourse it was also conveyed that a Cabinet Sub Committee (CSC) had already been constituted on that issue which will formulate a policy about their regularisation. And it was on the 22 Oct 2014 that with reference of government sources it was reported in media ( ofcourse Elections to LA were nearing ) the Government had got approved on 21st October approved recommendations of the Cabinet Sub Committee (CSC- FM A R Rather, RDM A M Sagar, P&D M Ajay Sadhotra, PHE, I&FC M S.L. Sharma, UD M Rigzin Jora ,H&ME M er Taj Mohi-ud- Din ) through circulation of memo among the Cabinet Ministers for regularisation of casual workers engaged in different Government departments after 1994 who had not been regularized by the successive dispensations .And in view of that 62,000 casual workers would be regularized out of which the workers engaged between 1994 to 2005 would be regularized by their Departments with immediate effect and remaining workers engaged after 2005 would be regularized before 2018 or as and when they complete 10 years of service. A approval was to cover only those workers whose names had been duly recommended by their Departments to the CSC of which majority of workers have been engaged in PHE, I&FC, PDD and PWD.
It was on 08-10-2015 that daily wagers called off hunger strike after the then Finance Minister in Mufti Sayeed PDP-BJP Government Haseeb Drabu promised that Govt will soon come up with a roadmap to regularize temporary workers including daily wagers, adhoc, contractual and all other such categories within next couple of months when he visited the protesting daily rated workers at Pratap Park Lal Chowk Srinagar where he also said that he had announced in the Assembly that an expert committee will be formed which will come out with a roadmap for regularizing all kinds of non-regular employees and within two to four months a roadmap will be framed and decided.
Minutes of 11th meeting of the Empowered Committee constituted vide J&K Government order NO: 139-F of 2015 Dated 19-08-2015 held on 13-09-2017 in reference to creation of posts for helpers for regularisation of left over DRWs ( daily rate workers) had said that the J&K Departments of I&FC and PHE had sent proposals of only 406 left over DRWs ( which included only 30 fresh cases and 144 cases for review along with court cases / and like ) like PHE Mech Srinagar -8 cases , PHE City Jammu – one case and PHE Akhnoor- One case and for review PHE Qazikund-105 case, PHE-Mech (S) Awantipora – 21 case , PHE Mech GW Srinagar-1. PHE Shopian -17.. SRO 64/1994 :Daily Rated workers / work charged employees (Regularisation ) Rules 1994 read with G.O 26 F of 1994 dated 31-1-2020.So, going by that there should be not many cases left in 2020.
But still demonstrations and protests alleging large cases pending are being reported even in 2020 , one would ask why ? The answer could be that governments come and go , they only do fault finding in earlier governments , they do not pick up the threads of the yarn earlier government might spun and hence do not maintain a continuity of the problem solving exercise started earlier. It will not be wrong to say that even the bureaucracy does not work seriously and seriously apprises the new government of any reformative exercise already started by earlier govt and instead just formally start working on what the new boss says.
(The author is Sr Journalist / Analyst Jammu & Kashmir Affairs [email protected])